Ellison Family Home (1921) 428 N. Phillips

Following the death of Ralph Ellison's father, Lewis Ellison, in 1916, the widowed Ida Ellison changed homes frequently as she tried to make ends meet on a widow's pension of $4.00 per month. In 1921, Ida and her two sons moved to a "shotgun shack", a small narrow house, situated one block over from a solidly white neighborhood.

The shotgun shack to which Ida Ellison moved her two boys for a few short months in 1921 was likely a rental property owned by the influential J. D. “Grandpa” Randolph, to whom the family was frequently beholden. Randolph’s daughter, Edna Slaughter, was one of Ida’s best friends as well as a life-long correspondent of adult Ralph. J.D. and his wife Uretta played key roles in Ellison’s maturation, the least of which was providing him domicile. J.D. Randolph was an intellectual mentor to Ralph, and his prosperous extended family often provided jobs to him, for he was always needing to help supplement Ida’s meager income. After a brief stint at 428, the Ellisons moved a block down Phillips to 827 East Second Street. Ellison later remembered that this move was to the servants’ quarters on the property at that address, and that it had six rooms, which may have been fixed in his memory as it afforded him his own bedroom: “It’s amazing how so many rooms and so many old houses cling to my mind.”

Jackson, Lawrence. Ralph Ellison: The Emergence of Genius. New York City, New York. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2002.